Opinio Juris - November 2008

Scroll down to learn about the Civil Rights Digital Library, the Foreign Law Guide, New Library DVDs, Automatic Bluebooking with CiteGenie, the 50 Best Inventions of 2008, and Google Flu Tracking. For more information about other legal research topics, please visit the Library's blog.

Civil Rights Digital Library

The Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL) is a joint initiative by Georgia libraries and academic institutions to make primary material about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s available on the Web. The initiative has three principal components: (1) a digital video archive of historical news film, (2) a portal connecting related digital collections, and (3) a learning objects component for educators. Users can search the collection or browse by catagories.

Foreign Law Guide

The Foreign Law Guide provides information on primary and secondary sources of foreign law. While it does not contain the full-text of these sources, it tells you which legal sources exist for a particular jurisdiction and where to find them. It covers nearly 200 jurisdictions from major nations to small semi-independent states. The Guide cites to hundreds of web pages containing reprints or translations of legislation and other legal materials.

New DVDs Available at the Library

The Library's collection of law-related DVDs continues to grow. We have recently added several titles, including: John Adams, Death and the Maiden, Big Easy to Big Empty, Charlie Wilson's War, and Michael Clayton. If you have any suggestions for future DVD purchases, please let us know.

CiteGenie Creates Bluebook Citations from Westlaw

CiteGenie is an add-on for the Firefox web browser that automatically creates pinpoint Bluebook citations when cutting and pasting from Westlaw. A review of CiteGenie appears in LLRX. Bonna Schuha, Reference Librarian at the University of Wisconsin, has created a quick video showing the use of CiteGenie.

Google Flu Tracking

Google is tracking the flu. The google.org: Flu Trends website claims that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. "Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu surveillance systems." In a nutshell, the theory is that people who have the flu symptoms will use google to search for flu-related information. Google says that "[a]cross each of the nine surveillance regions of the United States, we were able to accurately estimate current flu levels one to two weeks faster than published CDC reports."

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